The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Korea Claims to Test a Hydrogen Bomb

North Korea is a nuclear armed state now, and must be dealt with as such.

Note that this mess is George W. Bush’s fault. There was a deal in place, under Clinton, which gave North Korea what it wanted in exchange for not further developing nukes, and Bush cancelled it. It wasn’t the greatest deal, but it was better than this.

Right, so there are two choices here. Go to war with North Korea in a sneak attack. To reliably take out their nukes, the US would have to use nukes itself. China has said that it would defend North Korea if the US attacks it, however, and if they do, we’re talking WWIII. The US would probably “win,” but it’s quite likely it would be a nuclear war.

AKA: No winners. And even if China doesn’t get involved, much of Seoul goes up in flames and if the North Koreans do get off a nuke, well, Tokyo, the world’s largest metropolis, could get hit.

Alternatively, perhaps it is time to sign a peace treaty with North Korea and integrate it into the world economy, in exchange for no further development of nukes. I mean, strictly speaking, North Korea is still at war with the US and other nations, because no peace treaty was ever signed.

They might be, well, nervous about that. Totally crazy, I know, since the US never attacks other countries that… uhh, wait, where was I?

Yeah, so, negotiate a real peace treaty, or go to war, or… ummm, just let them keep getting more and more weapons till they really can destroy the US and pretty much anyone else.

In a sane world, only one of those three options would look good.

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I think it was Eisenhower’s fault and each successive POTUS has added to the mess in varying degrees, some more than others, and Dubya was more than others.

It’s ironic when you consider the rationale for tangling with Korea, at least the Official Justification, was to check & contain the spread of Communism (per The Domino Theory) in The Orient and Asia at large, but here we are more than a half century later and the Communists cum Kleptocratic Capitalists, i.e. Putin & Company, are in The White House and Red State America, the former Zealous Anti-Communists, and squarely behind and in full support of this ridiculous contradiction.

It’s like Monosodium Glutamate (MSG). Remember how it was so bad for you, so much so, the Chinese Restaurants had to advertise “No MSG”? Not anymore. There is a campaign underway to tell The Sheep that they were wrong all along and MSG is now good for you and everyone should start using MSG again.

or the u.s. could take the novel lead in pursuing world peace and dispense with all war-associated operations and administrations. killing begets more killing. staying the present coarse may lead to using nukes and may lead to national suicide, so the argument that a nation taking an anti-war stance is committing suicide is like arguing shades of pale.

Russia believes that the policy of putting pressure on Pyongyang to stop its nuclear missile programme is misguided and futile. The region’s problems should only be settled through a direct dialogue of all the parties concerned without any preconditions. Provocations, pressure and militarist and insulting rhetoric are a dead-end road. ~ Vladimir Putin

This is why Trump is perfect for Putin, because Trump makes Putin look MARVELOUS in comparison. Trump is like The Soviets of old and Putin is like the American Statesmen of old — a regular Woodrow Wilson. Trump, as Teddy Roosevelt’s opposite, doesn’t speak softly and carry a Big Stick, but instead speaks loudly & boldly and carries a Wet Noodle.

These idiotic Evangelicals. This is The Deliverer their Sadistic God promised them? Jesus Christ!! If this is the best their God can do, they are good & truly F*CKED. But of course we already know that — it’s just a matter of when and when may sooner than we think.

With many friends all a titter with Pence’s & McMaster’s successful ouster of Mr. Bannon, I’d offer this counterpoint to their posts. I am not a hippy-dippy dude, I have worn the US Army uniform and my DD-214 says honorable. I am constantly surprised by my fellow Americans who have never served expressing eagerness for evermore war. War is a horrible thing, it should be a last resort, not the 1st option and in that, I share Bannon’s world view and wish others would do likewise.
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“To Mr. Trump’s threat of “fire and fury” [on North Korea], Mr. Bannon replied, “There’s no military solution here…until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that 10 million people in Seoul don’t die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons”. While controversial, Mr. Bannon was just saying out loud what virtually every military commander believes — that a strike on North Korea would prompt overwhelming retaliation with untenable casualties.”

Early on Bannon asked everyone to read “The Best and the Brightest,” a book on America’s misadventure in Vietnam. Mr. Bannon opposed..the missile strike on Syria..expressed doubts about sending more troops to Syria or Iraq..is skeptical of American military intervention in Venezuela…to Bannon, all these ventures distract from reviving American manufacturing.”

I concur with Brennen. Similar qualification. Navy. Now that Bannon’s out, I expect Trump to be bog standard US Politician.

Sometnong which appears to be a variant of:

If the only tool you have is a hammer, all problems look like nails…

aka

If the only tool you have is the largest military on earth, all solutions look like wars…

I do wonder when, or if, the US/S Korea biannual “exercises,” held during N Korea’s planting and harvest times, which places enormous pressure on N Korea, will be scheduled to midwinter, and how the US can ever gain the trust of the N Koreans after the WW II and Korean War actions, considered betrayals by the N Koreans, can be settled.

I find the US’ denouncement of other countries just a little one dimensional — lacking any discussion of the history behind the “denouncement”

Are all the mirrors in DC, magic mirrors? They do seem to reflect an distorted view of the world.

It’s not as if the US has wandered around the world, toppling rulers, invading countries, and creating havoc by its behavior or destroying economies with its IMF and World Bank vassals,….is it now?

All talk about approachment with N Korea rests on the assumption that the their ICBM nuclear development is merely aimed at winning economic concessions from the West – that their motivation is simple extortion.

What if NK’s motive is far more nefarious – revenge suicide. As a psychologist, I try to see the word through they eyes of others. NK is a country where nearly every citizen has lost relatives to US military aggression, seen their country bombed into the stone age, watched sanctions bleed their economy dry, and the whole time watched nemesis S.Korea thrive.

Most suicides are rationalized by a feeling of hopelessness, and there is little doubt that NK’s economic situation is hopelessly in decline. When your bunker is being over-run, your motivation shifts from self-preservation to suicidal revenge – kill as many of the enemy SOBs as you can before they kill you. So, what if NK’s aim is suicidal payback?

US, RU, and other nuke powers have been lulled into complacency by the umbrella of mutually-assured destruction (MAD). However, MAD assumes that opponent countries are not, well, “mad” in any sense of the word. However, the US and its allies may well be perceived as having their bunker economically over-run. They may see mass starvation and collapse is imminent. They also can read in the free US press that the US is no more prepared for nuclear attack than it was conventional attack on Pearl Harbor Day.

NK does not have to incinerate NYC or even Boise – they just have to incinerate a lot of industry and the rich people who profit from it in say Japan, S. Korea, Hawaii, and maybe Seattle and San Francisco. If we fail to prevent just one of those cities from a hit, we will likely not see WWIII, but a collapse of American power and influence for creating the tensions that led to such a disaster. We also likely see wide-spread economic collapse. Just look at the economic fallout of Houston and that was just rain – not radiation fallout.

The real culprit in all this is the Chinese who have aided and abetted successive North Korean regimes for more than 60 years, and both directly and indirectly (through Pakistan) are the reason why North Korea has a credible nuclear program. I favor a total embargo on North Korea. If either the Russians or the Chinese demur, then we place all the responsibility for what follows on them. And whatever they may say in support of North Korea, neither Russia nor China are going to precipitate a nuclear conflict to defend it. In particular, if the Chinese do not participate fully and completely in an embargo, we can go after their highly unstable banking system.

It is important to remember that the business model of the North Korean regime is extortion and its primary goal is continuation of the regime. So really the peace treaty and integration into the world economy are off the table because both would spell the end of the regime. Nor does North Korea need nukes to defend itself. It is such a shithole that no one, including the US, wants to invade it.

US policy has been to wait out North Korea, to contain it long enough so that it collapses on its own like the USSR or moderates like China and Vietnam. The North Korean nuclear program explodes this policy. It is less important that North Korea may have tested probably a borderline hydrogen weapon as that it is getting close to the miniaturization of device and development of delivery system to pose a real and imminent threat to the US. That is unlike the Russian and Chinese nuclear arsenals which are for deterrence, North Korea’s nukes are for use, to extort, to say to the US “Prop us up or we are going to take some of you out on our way down.”

It is probably not going to be a very popular view here but the US should go to the Russians and Chinese and tell them contain the North now or we will destroy it now, and if their efforts are unsuccessful, then we will destroy the North. This is really no different than how the Russians or Chinese would react if North Korea posed a similar threat to them. And if the Chinese are faced with the certainty that if they do not act against the North, they will be flooded with millions of refugees from it after an American nuclear attack, they will act.

As horrible as it sounds, a nuclear war with North Korea is feasible. It could fall out something like this. While efforts for an embargo go forward, moving nuclear assets in area. In the absence of an embargo, the detonation with very short notice of a 5 megaton device about 6 miles from Pyonyang with the warning that any conventional response across the DMZ would trigger a full out nuclear attack. Being ready in the event that the North Korean regime does attack to use a spread of standard 150 kiloton weapons immediately north of Seoul to minimize any North Korean artillery fire and nuking primary North Korean bases, ports, and staging areas.

The problem is that the US currently has a weak and stupid President. To avoid a nuclear conflict or set up the needed groundwork to take out the North, clear and credible messages need to be sent by us. Trump is neither.

As for nuclear war, it is in our future. The likelihood of the North using a nuclear weapon in the next twenty years I put at 50%. With regard to India-Pakistan, I put the odds at 10% within 5 years, 40% within 10 years, and 90% within twenty years. You can do your own assessments.

The thing about sociopathic blowhards like Hugh is, the love starting wars that they don’t participate in.

The other thing about Hugh is, he clearly doesn’t understand/care-about the worldwide economic depression he is prescribing for others to endure…kinda reminds me of EZ-rah Klien in the run-up to the Iraq invasion.

S Brennan, yours was precisely the hysterical response I was expecting. You have this idea that if you just close your eyes real tight and ignore the nasty realities of war and totalitarian regimes they will just go away. And you in all your Pontius Pilate sanctimoniousness will be absolved of having to take any action or have any responsibility. If you are so worried about a worldwide depression, why are you not asking the Chinese and Russians, but especially the Chinese why they have through their policies created the current threat.

I think that progressives are just awful on foreign policy because they have this pollyannish view of the world. Whenever a little bit of the real world impinges on your incoherent fantasies, you go ballistic. Sorry to burst your bubble. My point, much like Ian’s, is that we should pursue our diplomatic options mainly with regard to China and prepare our military ones at the same time. If North Korea’s goal is to pose a real nuclear threat to the US, it needs to be either dissuaded or destroyed. As I previously pointed out, if it were doing this to China or Russia, they would already have acted.

Hugh’s use of dark humor brought up a flashback of Slim Pickins riding a Nuke in Dr Strangelove but it was still a bit chilling. The one thing we should know about Nuke war is that there would be no winner only losers.

The sober analysis of NK Hugh made, before the abyss opened up and glared at us, is realistic unlike the Pollyannaish drivel about making some kind of deal with Kim and his generals. The Clinton deal was a bad joke and the republicans were proven right in calling it appeasement. NK’s Nuke program didn’t even slow down just moved underground while some Pollyanna’s praised its progress.

The ploy used by NK of claiming to want normalized relations with the US while they ignored their promises shows they were clever at manipulation the gullible elite in the US. The country they needed to normalize relations with was South Korea the country they invaded and still claim as theirs.

Trump and Mnuchin are cranking up the pressure on China and anyone else trading with NK with new sanctions. The penalties are harsh, a cutoff of US trade with anyone who doesn’t join in the complete trade isolation of NK.

Hell, another alternative to Brennan’s ignorance and fantasies to simply wait and accept the loss of major metropolis, and let that be the time for a military response. Or no response. As Lincoln said do some math. If there is no military alternative, of course there is we just take casualties, then surrender. NK is probably pretty cheap, and losing Hakodate or Pusan or Seattle may be less damaging than a war. Bannon said ten million losses, what’s Seattle?

But they should be American losses, not South Korean or Chinese. I am sure that Brennan would approve, since any pacifist is willing to make sacrifices for peace. Well, and because I fucking despise Americans and Westerners for always guaranteeing it is colored bodies that the fat melts off and the eyeballs explode, and then feeling righteous in their pacifism. And so I want whites to fucking die.

The key to civilization is human sacrifice. LeGuin din’t free the girl in the basement, she walked away from Omelas.

The real sacrifice begins when you start deciding which morals and values you give up when the shit gets thick. Giving your own life is cheap, choosing and owning killing which innocents, and owning it, is the mark of responsibility. Course you can go monk or hermit or egoist like Gandhi and that is more acceptable than pretending innocence in the world.

America is wholly responsible for Korea. In the late forties America chose violent world-threatening anti-communism, not cause freedom, but cause dollars and Empire.

Kim and NK has our number. Americans will always always sacrifice colored bodies for bucks, and their own peace and prosperity. In part, he wants to show this to Asia.

Give NK everything, anything, if you are serious. Start loading container ships with gold, computers, the Mona Lisa. What are ten million human lives worth? Well, a trillion dollars, ten trillion, the whole economy? If Kim asks for Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Evans as fucktoys, handcuff them and load em up.

I too want to sacrifice lives, maybe millions, but I want them to be Imperial fucking subjects, rather than slaves and corpses overseas.

America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy.”
— John Quincy Adams

Oh, for the days when the U.S. did not have 900 foreign bases in 130 countries! Just a pollyannish lefty who sees the “we have to try to control everything everywhere in the world” of our foreign policy establishment as what C. Wright Mills called “crackpot realism”. Or maybe just a unicorn seeker who dreams of a year in my life when my country won’t be fighting a war.

Kim, maybe, could be a even richer more comfortable dictator is if he made a deal. Could be the last ideological communist state, and yeah, he wants revenge. If he does make a deal, his people will be richer but 80% will be despairing slaves, knowing they are forever ruled.

I say maybe because obviously Saddam and Qaddafi and Assad tried to make deals, and the Pahlavi option is no longer available. OECD wants it all. That is an interesting change.

I would give surrender a try, but I don’t make policy and I am not willing to die on the barricades or lead the riot. I hope it begins before I die.

Trump (or Obama or Kamala Harris) won’t surrender, the masses won’t rise*, and I see little point in worrying about it.

China has made it clear, Kim starts it; they will do nothing to help NK, USA starts it; China is in and in all likelihood, Russia and Iran. We probably would win such a war, but the death toll, when you count famine & disease could run into the billions…all for a little man with a small penis, who’s kingdom, like his penis, will never grow.

Not really. I prefer fairly specific declarations of who people are willing to kill and how many, who we are willing to let die and how many, and a declaration that this will be on net a good thing, or the best available. Done of course in such a ambiguous way that the authorities don’t knock on the door and we minimize social shunning. I have failed at the last.

All bullshit from a blowhard myself of course. I know the weakest and most vulnerable will die (poor Korea) precisely because I was unwilling to declare for violence and induced catastrophe when it might have made a difference. But declaring now does not redeem the blood is dripping from my hands and all I see around me are vampires and zombies. In the mirror.

The problem with rewarding nuclear brinkmanship is that it reinforces the same behavior over and over again. surrender the mona lisa, next time surrender half of oil supply, surrender your children. Well surrender everything. Break up the USA and give all the good parts to the best people – Best Korea of course.

I doubt it’s even possible to have a meaningful treaty with a Stalinist cult of personality regime that thrives on lying and has never kept agreements. Then there is the fact that the US never declared war on NK but were a part of a UN force defending SK from an invasion.

SK is the country that NK was at war with and would have to treat with. This is also probably impossible because while SK was offering help with factories for NK workers NK was digging invasion tunnels under Seoul sinking their ships and kidnapping people on the DMZ.

The fixation that Kim has on the US seems to be more about a lingering denial of the fact that SK with US and other countries help could not be conquered even with their military and 800,000 PLA. This reminds me of the snowflake response to Trump’s victory and it might last as long

I am so old that I remember civil defense bunkers in the basements of UofW buildings. Even then, they were moldering away. Once the Soviet Union exploded a hydrogen bomb in 1954, they were useless. Five Hydrogen bombs will take out the LA Basin, the Bay Area, Willamette Valley, the Puget Sound and the Fraser River Valley. Tonight’s NewsHour discussion mentioned three options; war, diplomacy and an ICBM armed North Korea. The Bill Clinton’s man who negotiated the 1994 nuclear deal with North Korea that stalled their development until George W Bush cited the deal with Saddam Hussein to successfully dismantle Iraq. He failed to mention that the neocon elite who subsequently invaded Iraq since it had no weapons of mass destruction are still in control of the US government. No one mentioned deterrence. Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) works; right up to now.

Authoritarian Capitalism has placed the world in a position that a new Korean War is the only possibility. A conventional war will kill millions of Asians and Americans. China has promised to defend North Korea if attacked. If a nuclear weapon is used, which North Korea possesses; escalation of the war into a global holocaust is guaranteed.

So, I see that bob mcmanus, STMB, and even Margaret Kimberly over at Black Agenda Report have been honest enough to declare their fixed animosity toward “white people.”

As disturbing as that is, I’d rather have it out in the open then to continue to pretend that only white people are reprehensible enough to dislike other groups based on racial or ethnic characteristics they can’t help but have.

Knowing the truth in such irrefutable form is not, in itself, enough to engender responsive hate in me, but, at the least, it certainly tempers the amount of sympathy these types will get from me and many others when next they come whining for handouts.

Reality is your friend, if you can only see it. Thanks, bob, STMB, and Margaret, for confirming and helping me to see the reality that was already suggested by the overwhelming weight of all the available data.

You are confusing being a neoliberal “cheerleader” with being a neoliberal “leader”. It’s the same moral burden of course, but fortunately for all concerned, you are so far down the food-chain as to be inconsequential at any future war crimes tribunal.

I would further suggest that if nuclear Armageddon is the ONLY possibility, we need to question the premises. There’s more ways than one to skin a cat and more ways than one to deal with the irrepressible Mr. Kim. Have the Chinese find out what he wants and give it to him in exchange for a general ramping down of bellicosity. If that won’t work, engineer some regime change from within(i.e. bribe one of his lieutenants), it shouldn’t be that tough with Chinese cooperation. They have as much if not more than we do to lose if the NK situation goes sideways. Damn near anything is preferable to “Just nuke the bastards!”.

Ten Bears, I stand corrected, let me add a word to make explicit, what was implicit:

“Mandos, I think you are being too grandiose.

You are confusing being a neoliberal “cheerleader” with being a neoliberal “leader”. It’s the same moral burden of course, but fortunately for all concerned, you are so far down the food-chain as to be inconsequential at any [hypothetical] future war crimes tribunal.”

Everyone seems to be fixated on the missiles which NK keeps sending skyward.
I still remember a story in the Reader’s Digest from the late 60s, telling of the history of the destruction of the US by Red China. The ChiComs shipped nukes in crates of fish, with timers scheduled to got off simultaneously in multiple cities. Is it too much to think that NK might have already shipped a container with a special gift amongst the 16,000 coming into the US every day? All it would need is a deadman switch, and the day the signal stops, LA goes.

It seems to me you left out a third scenario….namely, for whatever irrational reason/s, be it negligence, or insanity, or some death wish, NK goes on developing its weapons…as we go on talking (if, hopefully, we ARE talking) and launches a nuclear strike on a major US city. This scenario cannot be ruled out, it would seem to me. IF this IS a possible scenario, I’m dubious the population of the US is going to sit around and wait for it to happen.

Today I learned that the long-standing situation on the Korean peninsula has something to do with an economic philosophy that took hold in the 70s which I generally disagree with, but I bear a “moral burden” for the fact that the Kim family needs to preserve their fiefdom in NK via thermonuclear weapons, because reasons.

“This scenario cannot be ruled out…NK launches a nuclear strike on a major US city…I’m dubious the population of the US is going to sit around and wait for it to happen.”

Well Jonst,

I can’t speak for you conjecture on NK bringing annihilation down upon itself, but it turns out that you are right in one respect, we didn’t [past tense intentional] sit around and wait for “it” to happen. Back in the 90’s & 00’s, the US developed two missile systems to bring down a an incoming missile fired by a rogue state.

For four years I worked feverishly on the THAAD project and can proudly tell you we are not faced with the choice you propose, we don’t have to wring our hands before pushing the doomsday button down…based on your armchair conjecture.

Nope, we can sit back comfortable in the knowledge that Kim’s generals know the score, [even if you don’t] and will not commit a pointless act of war only to be humiliated with a Aegis-US-Navy/THAAD-US-Army shoot-down and then to be utterly destroyed without any pity or help from Russia or China.

then to be utterly destroyed without any pity or help from Russia or China.

Without really committing to what will or what should happen, I gave a little thought to what would happen with a nuclear attack on Iran and the wind patterns etc and concluded that Pakistan and India would suffer unacceptable casualties. SK and Japan are even closer and more vulnerable.

A serious abandonment of machismo would accept that even if Seattle were vaporized, and even if NK didn’t get off another shot, the utter destruction of NK might entail massive damage to SK, Japan and the Global Economy. The cold cost/benefit calculation might still be surrender.

There was a great deal of discussion in Imperial Japan about the reciprocal intermingling of cultures involved in the incorporation of Taiwan and Korea into the Empire. If Koreans are also the cildren of the Sun God, what happens to Japaneseness? Look at what happened to Rome. etc.

What does Korea want in a win? Tiny poor country, it is not going to occupy Kansas and make them worship Kim. Empires and colonialism are over.

“There is no military solution to Korea” should be taken seriously. No matter what NK does, there is no military solution.

Here’s the thing. Your Hegemon, your God-Emperor is a coward. A dithering coward. Kim has him figured out to a tee. He will keep poking the Hegemon/God-Emperor in the nuts and the eye just to see him squirm. It works. It’s entertainment for him. It’s disruptive.

When you’re in an asymmetric situation, the more disruptive you are, the better. Right?

What happens isn’t up to “us.” More than ever, it’s up to His Grenerals, and some of them, I’m sure, believe that nuclear annihilation (of NK) is not only survivable by the USA, it’s desirable whatever happens on the periphery of the Apocalypse. If we lose Tokyo, Seoul, or even Seattle, oh well.

If His Divinity gets worked up enough by Kim’s disruptive tactics, there’s little doubt he’ll order the Generals to annihilate his foe.

Long term denial is producing this snowflake delirium with these creepy projections of their madness at our busy Hegemon. Every time they think they are winners again Trump trashcans another part of Obama’s illegal legacy and they are reduced to spectators running around with their hair on fire.

Appeasement of NK has been tried and failed but some wise morons still demand we believe in the impossible notion of a deal with these lying connivers. Trump is directing most of his rhetoric at China the only country with real leverage with NK and they are the ones who should dismantle the madness they helped create.

We should have no hand in that project but Kim’s outbursts and threats must be confronted with assurances that any real attack by NK will be responded to with massive retaliation.

In addition to being very ignorant about the mechanics and therefore the necessity of world war, your groundless redefinition of words to maintain your self-deception reinforce the impression that you are the “delusional one”…I’d add, with a severe case of megalomania.